Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/21

 disappointed. He represses the mother by identifying himself completely with her.

(b) The path to homosexuality leads through narcissism—that is, love of self, as one was, or as one may ideally be.

(c) The sexual ideal of the invert includes not only traits of former female and male sexual objectives, but also features of one's own beloved self.

(d) Being brought up in surroundings exclusively feminine—the father does not count in such circumstances—fosters homosexuality in the male as well as in the female, for reasons that are not sufficiently clear as yet. Moreover, the urning is usually an only child.

(e) Finally, inversion may be fostered by a sort of "latter-day obedience" to the mother's commands. I have observed not rarely that mothers warn their children against harmless, though warm and friendly contact with the other sex, as something unpermissible and bad and that the teaching thus instilled may unfortunately increase the disposition towards one's own sex through later obedience.

As Stekel has well stated, in commenting upon Sadger's conclusions, the first of these is false, because the homosexual is not a victim of withdrawal from the mother, but rather of a fixation upon her. Further, one does not repress a person when one identifies one's self. Identification is direct love; differentiation means repression. Where homosexuals (male) identify themselves with the mother—as many of them do—there may also be present a repression of the father-ideal.